New Zealand is a global leader in agentic AI use, with about half of ChatGPT Enterprise output tokens coming from agentic tools and strong per-capita adoption and developer activity around OpenAI’s API.

The most prolific 10% of NZ businesses using OpenAI generate roughly 14 times more output per worker than typical firms, driven by widespread use of multi-step, agentic AI tasks.

In daily life, 13% of people use AI for fitness or wellbeing, 55% check symptoms before a doctor visit, and 40% research medicines or treatments.

Household use includes cooking ideas (25%), finding restaurants (21%), budgeting (31%), exploring travel options (33%), and building full holiday itineraries (18%).

Successful AI uptake requires training, experimentation, and leadership buy-in, with internal AI champions and hackathons as examples.

Ārepa uses ChatGPT to analyze large brain-health datasets, accelerating translation from discovery to real-world application.

Experts say maximizing benefits comes from depth of usage, integration with information and systems, clear permissions, and skills training.

Work usage accounts for 36% of ChatGPT messages, with top uses in writing, how-to guidance, and education; about 10% use it daily for drafting emails to their boss.

Patterns include 21% using ChatGPT for questions before major sports events and 10% for daily sports and news updates.

Adoption of agentic AI is uneven across firms, with some embracing multi-step capabilities while others lag, widening the gap over time.

A key open question remains whether AI usage translates into clear bottom-line gains for large enterprises, with ongoing tracking of revenue impact.

New Zealanders send nearly 10 million ChatGPT messages daily, with 40% using it daily for quick answers and explanations and 45% saving at least four hours per week, signaling meaningful productivity gains.